2 buddies of mine, were just out this past week, pitting the V3 against the Etrac, in a deep-turf type environment. Ie.: by "deep turf", you know, like trying to see if there's some deeper high conductors (barbers, IH's, etc...) that have eluded the past few decades of hunters in these hard-hit turf zones. They are both experienced in both Whites and Minelab evolution of products, and both know how to pull the deep whispers in junky turf. This type hunting would not mimic a "dig all" relicky type hunt location, so it's only a test of this certain niche, which the Explorers have dominated for a long time, as we all know
My friend running the Etrac got a squeek of a possible deep coin sandwiched bettween some shallow surface junk. He calls over my other friend, using the V3. The V3 could not hear the signal, no matter how he set it up (sitting there fiddling with multiple different options, different sweep angles, speeds, etc...). To the extent he might have gotten it "hot enough" to get a flutter or squeek, he had to be honest, and say that he could not have heard it on his own, had it not been pointed out to him. That is, you can probably make ANY machine hot-enough, to get a signal that's just been pointed out to you, right? But the real test is: is that simply so hot, that you move along and here indistinguishable bings and bongs everywhere else now too?
Well, they dug up the target, and it was an 1868 s half dime from about 6"
No sure if these flagged target test results were a function of junk (ie.: maybe the V3 would've reached it, if it had been sitting solo, and the Etrac just happens to have a faster recovery for junky areas?). But none-the-less, this was an in-field comparison, over an un-disturbed deep silver coin target, by two experienced users, who tried hard to make an honest "would I have heard it?" analysis.
I am kinda disappointed I didn't learn any new trick for separating zinkers from IHs. 
